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Transnational arrangements between different types of higher education institutions provide an interesting example of partnership working, being business arrangements with learning as a core organising principle. Successful partnerships both learn and work together and can become mutually transformative, sources of growth for the individuals and institutions involved. Individual projects early in the lifecycle of a partnership can support this development, enabling both organisations to take responsibility for relationship building and the demonstration of trust. This approach has the advantage that it takes the focus away from the home/away dichotomy often apparent in discussions of transnational partnership working and instead attention turns to the development of a new hybrid organisation, a ‘third space’ characterised by reciprocity, commitment, effective communication, competence and trust.

This chapter provides a case study analysis of a learning and teaching programme which provided the opportunity for a partnership between a London-based university and a private provider in Sri Lanka to have transformational potential. It uses multiple sources of data to identify practical characteristics associated with developing a culture of transformative partnership working which includes the experiences of the ‘boundary spanner’ responsible for its development and leadership.

The article considers the challenges involved in measuring the performance of local public service networks through an empirical analysis of Comprehensive Area Assessments (CAAs), a short-lived but pioneering attempt to gauge the effectiveness of local governments, health trusts, police and fire services in England.

Primary data about the implementation and impact of CAAs were gathered using a mixed method approach, including surveys of local public services, inspectorates and residents together with focus groups and semi-structured interviews in 12 case study areas.

CAAs encouraged agencies to strive to achieve better partnership working but did not provide sufficiently robust comparative data to enable managers to benchmark their performance against other areas or identify good practice elsewhere. Policy makers hoped that citizens would use CAAs to hold services to account but the process failed to attract media or public interest.

The logic of a more ‘joined-up’ approach to performance assessment of local partnerships is compelling. But in practice it is difficult to achieve because institutional arrangements at a national level mean that different sectors work within very different budget systems, professional networks and performance frameworks. Assessing the outcomes achieved by local partnerships also presents new challenges for inspection agencies and requires them to use new kinds of evidence.

This is the only attempt to date to evaluate CAAs and adds to an understanding of the challenges of assessing the performance of local public service partnerships. It highlights new questions for researchers and policy makers about the types of evidence needed to measure partnership performance and the extent to which the public may use the results.

To examine and account for an innovative project bid and delivery partnership by a fire and rescue service in an area (Eastern European migrant integration) usually thought to be beyond its remit. An interpretation of the findings will be based on public value theory.

The study examines three sets of conditions: national and local political and economic environments facilitating the grant bid and its success; a history of safety and safeguarding work by a specific fire and rescue service that made the bid plausible and leadership of the FRS in constructing both bid (for funding) and turning that into a delivery partnership. Methods included a focused analysis of existing academic work and government reports, observation of partnership meetings, interviews and a focus group.

That the success of the funding bid and delivery of objectives can be explained in terms of national government funding decisions relating to migrant integration; the recognition both locally and nationally that the specific FRS had the capacity, because of previous innovative partnership work, to manage all aspects of a sub-regional partnership; the ability of the FRS to manage the delivery of partnership objectives over a two year period; that the project realised a range of public value outcomes. It generated a range of public value outcomes. Individual managers took risks and worked ‘beyond authority’ but the partnership that they built and maintained was the principal entrepreneurial agent.

The findings may have implications for the reconfiguration of sub-regional public service delivery.

The chapter is a study of a successful innovative, fire and rescue service led public sector partnership creating public value outcomes.

At the centre of recent reforms relating to Scottish teacher education is the report of a large-scale review, ‘Teaching Scotland's Future’ (Donaldson, 2011). This chapter provides a critical overview of one aspect of the review, namely partnership. Two key agendas underpinned the 50 recommendations contained in the Donaldson Report: the development and strengthening of partnership between universities, local authorities and schools; and, the modernisation and ‘re-invigoration’ of teacher professionalism. In ‘Teaching Scotland's Future’ it was argued that both of these are required for the development of ‘high quality’ teachers through initial teacher education. The report positioned teaching as an intellectual occupation, highlighting the complexity involved, making clear that teacher preparation should remain within the context of higher education.

Although the key messages from ‘Teaching Scotland's Future’ received support from across the education sector, the extent to which they have been achieved in practice remains unclear. We will explore the extent to which this key text has been translated into current initial teacher education provision through results from the Measuring Quality in Initial Teacher Education (MQuITE) Project and the ways in which partnership was experienced in post-Donaldson working. Through this partnership working will be examined in Scotland. The chapter will conclude by considering where we are now, and some final thoughts will be presented about the role that ‘Teaching Scotland's Future’ can play in a changing partnership policy landscape.

The concept of distributed leadership within library services is explored in this chapter. It focuses on how this model of leadership, which devolves leadership functions and practice widely throughout organizations, can lead to intra- and interorganizational collaboration as a catalyst for library service development and innovation. The chapter discusses the distributed leadership approach by presenting selected results of a study of team leaders in public and university library services in the East Midlands region of the United Kingdom. The study employed an online questionnaire and individual interviews with library team leaders to identify the level and nature of collaboration taking place in library services and also to ascertain the skills needed for successful partnership work. The interviews focused primarily on how and why collaborations occurred and it emerged that the team leaders had considerable autonomy to establish and participate in partnerships, fitting well within the distributed leadership paradigm. The chapter adds to, and augments the limited literature on distributed models of leadership in libraries by exploring how this approach works in practice. It also proposes and evidences a link between distributed leadership, collaborative working, and innovation. The authors suggest that distributed leadership can help library services innovate and lead service development by freeing up the creativity of employees through a less formal, hierarchical leadership approach. The chapter ends with propositions for a research agenda to establish the best conditions and most appropriate format of distributed leadership in library services.

The author feels haunted; troubled by the ethnography that the author conducted some years ago of a new partnership group that was attempting to set up a community learning centre. The author is aware that it doesn’t sound like a particularly alarming research topic, and perhaps that is where some of the issues began. The author did not expect an ethnographic haunting to occur. The partnership recruited the author less than a year into the creation of the project and spent two years as a sort of ‘researcher in residence’. The original idea was that the author would observe the initial development of the project and then, when the community learning centre was established, the author would research the centre’s activities and how they were experienced by village residents. However, fairly soon into the project, problematic dynamics developed within the group, leading to irreconcilable conflict between members. The community learning centre was never established and the author was left to piece together an ethnography of a failed partnership. Researching an increasingly dysfunctional partnership was an emotionally exhausting activity, especially when relationships between members became progressively hostile. Managing data collection and analysis at this time was difficult, but the author was shocked that, a number of months (and now years) later, revisiting the data for publication purposes remained uncomfortable. The author managed to produce the PhD thesis on the back of this study, but the author has not felt able to go back to the data, despite there being findings worthy of publication. This ethnography is in a state of limbo and is at risk of becoming lost forever. In this chapter, the author explores the reasons for this and discusses lessons learned for future projects.

In Britain, labor−management partnership has been the fulcrum of the Labor Government's employment relations programme since its election in 1997. The Involvement and Participation Association (IPA, 1997; website: http://www.partnership-at-work.com) − the influential employers’ organization − has been at the forefront of promoting labor−management partnership to improve productivity in UK firms through greater employee involvement and participation (see http://www.partnership-at-work.com). The Trades Union Congress (TUC; partnership institute website: http://www.partnership-institute.org.uk) and several of its constituent unions have also endorsed partnership with employers as a route to promote employee ‘voice’ at work, secure better bargaining outcomes and improve union membership levels and density (Undy, 2001). Union density in the UK private sector has declined from 19.9 per cent in autumn 1997 to 17.2 per cent in autumn 2005, while in the public sector it has declined from 60.9 per cent to 58.6 per cent over the same period of time (Grainger, 2006). Advocates of partnership argue that such arrangements deliver mutual gains to the parties involved, viz. higher productivity and profits for employers, better wages and higher employment security to workers and greater influence over management decisions for unions, which in turn help them to attract and recruit new members (e.g. Haynes & Allen, 2001; Deery & Iverson, 2005).

This chapter will take a case study approach to partnership in Higher Education (HE), highlighting good practice and showcasing FOCUS West as a model of innovative collaboration. FOCUS West is a government-funded, regional access organisation in the west of Scotland (http://www.focuswest.org.uk). The region comprises roughly 5,000 square miles with a population of around 2.2 million. Delivered by a partnership of the Universities of Glasgow, Strathclyde and the West of Scotland, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) it works with schools and local education authorities to increase progression to HE from the 37 lowest progression secondary schools in the area. It delivers a programme of guidance and support to pupils from S3 to S6 (14–18 year olds), targeting activity to those young people who have potential to achieve HE entry. FOCUS West, as a partnership organisation, addresses vital issues of social mobility in Scotland, where progression to university and all of the attendant opportunities, remains stubbornly linked to socio-economic circumstances.

The proposed chapter will focus on university partnerships for sustainable development, specifically in relation to the health and social care sector. As this is a burgeoning field of research and enterprise, this chapter would provide a valuable resource and much-needed exploration of how and with whom universities partner in terms of sustainability in health and social care.

The majority of universities have health sciences and social care departments delivering courses at undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctorate levels. As such, the chapter presents the range of opportunities for interdisciplinary learning and working, shares methods to foster social responsibility through partnerships between students, staff, clinicians, and service users, and acknowledges the prospect of lifelong learning that partnerships in sustainability can generate.